Pacing
by eboleiul
Summary: He's been around since her spectacular leap off the Ferris Wheel at the Carnival, watching, keeping her safe. It could be penance, or it could masochism, or maybe he's just drawn to her like a moth to the light. Whatever the case, when she needs him, he's there.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: If you haven't watched Heroes Reborn, WHAT ARE YOU DOING? No, though, if you haven't watched it, BEWARE, because AHEAD BE SPOILERS. I've mashed up a little of the "canon" that was established in the ebooks (the terror!) and the mini-series event, INCLUDING THE FINALE. So, basically, this is me, a person, standing outside the window of a network executive office, asking them, "DID YOU FORGET ABOUT SYLAR?!" Enjoy :D**

* * *

He'd been watching the other guy for a while now.

Not as long as he'd been watching her, but then again, he'd already tasted that apple and found the worm under his bite, too. She was always being followed by someone. Why not him?

Life had taken a strange turn, and he found himself watching her, following her, protecting her—but doing it all behind the scenes. She would hate him if she knew. That wasn't any different than usual, really. Salvaging what was left of his soul was a daily process, and he hadn't been the best at it, but he was best at it when she was near.

Year one passed. Her little stunt had made the world aware of them. Naturally, the population of the world that wasn't like them either stuck their heads in the sand or put his kind under suspicion. It wasn't all bad, though, because so many came out like they had just been waiting for the first to be brave. That was his special girl, and the world was remaking itself in her image. That's what those predisposed to madness thought. He was, and he did. She didn't want to be a public figure, however. She just wanted to be able to live in a world where she was accepted. There were times when following her was tough—times when she seemingly dropped off the planet. Those times were more often to happen when she was with her lover, whom he had inhabited once upon a time, the woman whose only power seemed to be making his fixation disappear.

Year two came and went, and finally the women split. He didn't know the reason, but it was easier to keep track of her from then on. Her life tottered on. His life of following her along, watching for the next sinister hand to reach for her, and to ward it off, continued.

The addition of the other guy wasn't an alarming development, not at first.

But life can throw curve balls at people who are expecting a pitch down the center line… Whatever, he didn't know shit about baseball. The thought had a smile curling his lip as he watched from behind the wheel of a car he had picked up three states ago. Though he didn't get the story on how they met, he knew that this guy was now a part of her life. Covertly picking up on their conversation in the car ahead, he made to tug on his "moustache"; he had borrowed an identity every time he took a vehicle.

"No," she said, "You don't understand. I have to go and see Emma. Peter is going to have to propose eventually, and I need to know her better. Besides, my cousin is going to be one soon, and I haven't met her."

"Claire," he said to her, hand reaching to casually brace his hand on her headrest, "I get that but we can't keep making side-trips. I thought you knew that."

Increasingly, he welcomed her relationship with this guy less and less. She knew how to pick them. It didn't take a genius or master in body-language or a mind-reader to see that this guy thought like a caveman. He was all possessive, but it came out like suggestions and talking-up.

There was always that faint hum of lies when the other guy was talking to her.

Her cousin and her cousin's parents—they were good people. This guy… he stank of underdeveloped character.

Things kept going. He kept assuming identities and she kept moving and she kept the guy. The guy kept wearing a stupid trench coat like it was his suit of armor or a pair of wings.

* * *

It was the November before June 13th, and the guy was gone, but he had left something behind. She was pregnant. All he had to do was borrow an identity to get into the clinic she went to for her test to know, for certain, that she had a life growing inside of her.

Something about the way it all happened made him mad. And not just by a little bit.

The hunger—or the memory of the hunger—crept back into the periphery of his brain. Where was this other guy? Why wasn't he with her? Why was it that he knew about the baby before the other guy did?

It was because she meant more to him than she did to the other man.

Days crept into weeks. He would put himself on her path, and he would always start out looking like he had originally—like he did when he slept and when he was by himself—but to get closer to her it was best he looked like someone else.

* * *

She sat next to him on a bench one day, and his heart almost hammered out of his chest.

"Hello," he had said, deception taking the visage of an old man, doddering with a puff of white hair.

"Hi," she said back, and her smile didn't reach her eyes. He couldn't help himself when he asked, "Couldn't be that bad, could it?"

She took more than a moment to answer. It was like she had to fight her emotions—likely worse from her pregnancy—just to smile again in a sad, sad way and say, "Maybe. Maybe it could."

"Aw no," he affected, accents and mannerisms always coming naturally to him, and he reached out a weathered old hand to cover one of her own, "No. Your future will be bright. You deserve all the happiness you can handle."

This seemed to let out some of the weight out of her sinking mood, and her face twisted a bit when she accepted his words. Her small, warm hand enclosed his like it was a life raft in a turbulent shipwreck. Her distress cut him deeply and a blink spread a haze of tears across his eyes. "I'm sorry," he offered, ineffectual and lacking a greater way to comfort her.

"Thanks," was her reply.

If he looked like himself and offered those words, would she take them or would she be angry to see him again? Would anger help her or hurt her?

"I just never thought… I'd be crying over a boy who left me," she said, almost choking on the words, her jaw pushing her teeth together as the tears started to fall. His hand reached out, and somewhere in the space between them, it really became his hand. She must have closed her eyes, because she let him brush the liquid off her cheek, but the second she saw him, she was off the bench. She was so small, yet, she held so much rage.

"You," she hissed, angrily wiping her face. Destroy the evidence. He couldn't help the martyred smile on his lips, saying, "Me." She didn't make the move to run like he thought she might, so he gave the bench next to him a pat. Years had gone by since he faced her like this. "Claire," he said, expression and voice soft, "I meant what I said. Sit down, talk to me."

Her eyebrows pulled together, thoughts seemingly warring. Eventually, though, something about him must have won out, because she sat. She looked ready to run, but she sat down.

"I know about your baby," he said, because he shouldn't keep that from her, he thought. The expression on her face was one he was classically familiar with. It was the I-hate-you-with-the-burning-passion-of-a-million-suns expression.

"How? Have you been following me?"

"Yes."

"For how long?"

"Since you jumped in New York."

"That was three years ago!"

"I know. You haven't done as much as I thought you would have after you outed all of us."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well—,"

She interrupted him, "You know what? I don't even want to know. That's enough." Moving to get up, she was stopped by his hand on her arm. If she could have ripped his arm from its socket with just her glare, she would have.

"Wait," he said, pleading, "I didn't come out until now because I knew you wouldn't want me following you, but you needed it. I've kept seven people from putting a steak in your head, and I've sabotaged three labs—after hours so no one was there—where they were planning to take you to cut you open and find out what makes you tick."

"Afraid of a little competition there?" she said, so quick and witty that he couldn't help laughing. It was short-lived, her glare boring a hole into his face. "Good one, but I stopped doing that after Peter got me out of the wall. What I was trying to say was that I've only been following you because there are people after you."

"Should I say thank you?"

"I think that's generally how people act when some has saved their life, but considering what I've done," he paused, eyebrows lifting only to fall again as he let her arm go, "I'd settle for having a clean slate."

Her chest moved like she heaved a sigh, probably thinking on how much she loathed him, before she finally sat back again. She didn't speak for several long minutes, and he took to watching the mundane part scene of people jogging and playing Frisbee and laughing in the sun with a certain amount of disdain.

"Were there really that many people after me?"

* * *

He'd won her over somehow.

The first time the babies—because there were two—woke her in the night by kicking, she called out to him in the dark, in the motel bed next to hers. He clicked on the lights and apprehensively reached to touch her stomach. The feeling of something alien moving against her insides was unsettling for a moment before his brain worked out what was happening. His smile was as wide as hers.

That had been the first night she let him touch her. There were more nights, and the nature of touching changed between them. He had started off as a villain for her, but here he was, changing from a protector to a companion, companion to lover.

* * *

"Sy," she said beside him in the car, having spent most of the day sleeping off an upset stomach, "My water broke."

His foot came dangerously close to slamming the brake down.

"What?" he said, voice squeaking for a moment, "Are you sure?"

"Unless you think I really can't hold my bladder any better, yeah," she said. The next surprise was only minutes later when a low groan passed her lips. "Does it hurt?!" he asked.

"It's a walk in the park," she growled, adding in an angrier voice, "Yes, it hurts. I'm having a contraction."

"But didn't you stop feeling pain after I took your power?"

"Mm-hm," she said, "Apparently it came back just in time for me to enjoy the pain of childbirth."

* * *

He got her out of the car at the hospital, bridal-carrying her to a wheel-chair just inside of the automatic doors. She had both hands on either side of her stomach as he wheeled her in, forgetting to shape-shift. They went to the first desk they found, and the man on the other side took one look at the pair of them and picked up the phone.

Half an hour later, she was in a labor and delivery room and he was saying he was the father and her husband so he could stay with her. She didn't act like she minded, but that could have been because she was effectively trying to push not one, but two, watermelons out of a keyhole. Seeing her in pain was distressing, but seeing her face get ashy and her lips go pale had him asking a flurry of questions until they kicked him out.

An hour later, he was beyond angry that they had. She had complications. They had to rush her to surgery. She had died, or so they were telling him. She couldn't be dead. That wasn't possible.

Somewhere else in Odessa, bombs were leveling peace-talks between Evos and the people who were afraid of them. Someone filled the sky with a shadow, and he could feel it robbing him of his gifts like the eclipse had. The unnatural shade came at the worst time possible, just when he could break into the operating room and revive his lover with the blood that only healed him because of her. Why wasn't she healing? Why didn't he understand anything anymore? It was this shadow, clouding his mind. If he could find who made it, kill them, he could bring her back.

He was without a gun, and without his powers, but she was dead, and the only way to bring her back was to go.

Everything was so confusing.

And all at once, he was himself again. He was a good distance from the hospital, on foot, and the sky was back to normal.

But she was dead? What about her children? He never thought to ask.

He had to go back to the hospital. He had to get his blood to her. He had to see his kids.

His kids?

Yes. They were his, like he was hers, and they were a family, and his family needed him.

* * *

The hospital was in chaos as bomb victims were being bussed in. He slipped in easily, shifting forms to look like some nondescript police officer, and made his way relatively unmolested.

In the hospital, at the same moment he entered the morgue, their twins were being sent back in time, and the twins' grandfather was realizing something went wrong with the power of the Master of Time and Space.

He could see her blonde hair under the blanket, and his whole body shook as he pulled back her shroud. The surgeons weren't all that concerned with putting her back together, he thought, and she looked more broken than she ever had before. He found a scalpel and cut the stitches away from her body and made his own cuts to himself, knowing that it would take more than a little blood to bring her back to life.

He spoke to her as he worked, and as blood poured from him to her.

When she woke, she was screaming, and then she was crying, and then screaming again, and then she was asking where her babies were. Wobbling after getting off the slab, she almost ran out into the hallway naked and barely healed, but he stopped her to put two patient gowns on her, one around her front and one around her back.

"Claire," he tried soothing her, "They're in the nursery, I think. They should be fine. Let's go see them."

That was all that he could say to keep her from bolting from his side. He helped her to walk, and he fully expected to find the twins at the end of their walk.

They weren't there.

Her grief was incalculable.

When he pulled her off the unconscious body of a nurse, she buried her face against his chest and cried like he had never seen anyone cry before. He set her in the passenger seat of a car he stole and started driving.

* * *

He was driving again, almost a year later, when a familiar voice filled the car, coming from the radio and the screens on their cellphones.

"Isn't that Micah?" she asked, holding the phone up for him to see, "He's grown up so much…"

Kids seemed to darken her mood. She couldn't be near them for very long at all. He understood. She was suffering from a wound that would never heal, no matter how much blood he pumped into her veins. They watched the entirety of Micah's video outing Renatus for what it was, and at the end, they looked at each other.

Between them, the unspoken thought passed: if they couldn't find their kids before the end of the world, at least the pain would be over sooner rather than later.

* * *

The search was fruitless; they had no idea what they were looking for, or who. Two babies? Two one-year-olds?

"That's," she said, stopping at the television in the gas station they had ran into for food, and what she was holding ended up on the floor. Her eyes were glued on the other blonde as the newscast repeated. In the gymnasium, with the Union Wells High School insignia behind her, a blonde teen was trying to get a message out to someone named Nathan.

"Where she went to school," she said, cryptically.

Beside him, the teen's mother went down on her knees.

"It's her," she started repeating. He tried to get her up; people were starting to stare. The teen's message played again, and from the floor, her mother told him, "It's her, and she's trying to find him. I can feel it. I know it's her."

They left the gas station quickly, and turned the car in the direction of Odessa at the first chance.

The world didn't end, but by the time he and she made it to the clock-tower at Gateway, the twins were gone. Their grandfather was propped against wreckage, and when she touched him, it was obvious he was dead.

"Save him," she said. There was no room for argument. "You cut me open. If I had my power, I would do it, but I don't. Save him."

"Can we take him to a hospital? Get a needle or something?"

"But you'll do it? Even if it takes… even if you have to…?" her features twisted, and she was overcome for a moment. He didn't hold it against her. This was her father. He meant so much more to her than the man who had tried to kill her, tortured her, and coveted her. That was their history, but the dead man was her dad.

"I'll do everything I can, Claire," he said.

He carried the body to car with his telepathy, and the man could have been sleeping with the way he arranged him in the backseat. She couldn't look back as they drove, but he could almost feel how disappointed she was that her twins hadn't been there when they were. He could tell she wasn't going to accept her father's death until it was permanent. Her blood—his blood would heal him, and they would find her kids.

"When he wakes up, you probably shouldn't look like you. Do you remember how _he_ looked?"

Was she afraid that her father wouldn't approve? Would it be easier to be the twins' father if he looked like their biological dad? "Yes. I remember," he answered, shifting his skin to prove it. The look on her face crossed somewhere between grief and anger before it cooled to a passive defeat. He'd even brought back the trench coat.

* * *

At the hospital, they snuck her father in through the back, placing him in an empty room so the waking wasn't as much of a shock as it had been for her. She helped him take five syringes of blood and then stood back as he simultaneously plunged the blood into her father's system, one for each limb and one for his heart.

They waited.

They tried again, and again. He got a bag and an I.V. line and tried that way, and it took so long to do that she was pacing the floor. "You'll wear a hole in the floor," he said, slight joke falling on deaf ears.

The bag dripped, and dripped, and it took hours, but her father finally opened his eyes. There was something wrong with him, though. He blinked, tried clearing his vision, and groaned.

"No," the man on the bed said, "No, Claire's dead. I thought the afterlife wasn't supposed to hurt like this."

She hugged him, and the man acted like he needed to ward off the nightmarish vision of his "dead" daughter.

"Dad, it's me," she said, "I'm alive. You are, too."

"No. That's impossible. Their power needed a conduit. I was… I was dead."

The twins. Their grandfather had died… being their conduit? "Do you know where they went?" he asked.

The man on the bed squinted, asking, "Who are you?"

"Their father," he said, without a hint of a lie.

"Claire?" the man asked his daughter, and she took his hand with a nod.

"I need a better explanation."

* * *

Union Wells High School let out for the day. The blonde teenager who had revealed her elemental powers in the gymnasium fit in surprisingly well. Like no one remembered that it had been her. Her great-grandmother and the Haitian had to have something to do with her easy transition. Her twin had returned to his life with his memories of his surrogate family and her phone number, and considering he could just teleport to her, she didn't lament his leaving.

She found a tarot card in her locker. The card made her feel somewhat uneasy, but also excited; the card was Gemini, and so few people knew she had a twin.

Angela took one look at the card and offered up an explanation: "It's from your father."

The man had a milkshake and left, and for some reason, the teen behind the counter with his girlfriend couldn't help but watch his back as he left. There was something on the table other than money, and when the teen picked it up, he was surprised by the image on the face. A tarot card? Why?

No sooner had he went to put the card in the back than his phone started ringing. His sister.

"It's from him," she said, and a chill passed up the teen's back, "Our dad. He must want to meet us."

"Why didn't he say anything while he was in here?"

"I don't know. I'm telling you what Angela told me."

"He was just here. I'll come and get you and we can go after him together."

* * *

"You're going to wear a hole in the floor," he said, watching her pace. She cut a glance at him, but generally paid no attention. "They're on their way. Noah said so."

"Do you think we should have warned them?" she asked.

"How?"

She knew he was right; he could see it in the way she made a face and sat down. "They're not babies… I'm not much older than they are. It's so complicated." He reached a hand over and rubbed her back. There was nothing to say. It was complicated, but the three of them deserved it. Where he had been robbed of his family, she had been robbed of a relationship with her children, of seeing them grow up, of having them hug her legs when they were little, of seeing them play.

A sound at the open door of the abandoned building had both of their heads snapping to attention. She rose to her feet and he did after. Creeping in cautiously, it was their daughter in the lead and their son following right after her. They stopped when they caught sight of their mother, twin expressions passing across their face.

"Mom?" the blonde teen choked out. She and her brother moved forward at the same pace, searching their mother's face. He could hear her heart pounding in the wordless silence.

"Claire-bear," the twins' grandfather said from behind the pair, startling them, "Meet Malina and Nathan. Malina, Nathan, these are your parents."

* * *

 **A/N: So, there may be a continuance, but I need feedback. Please review? Please? PWWWEEAASSEEE? I'm begging, and who knows, maybe your headcanon could be included... *waggles eyebrows from place on knees, which totally wars with each other, but w/e***


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: I would up the rating to M for mature here, so go in there aware, please. I wrote this as a continuation of sorts for Pacing, but Pacing can stand alone if you need it to. Thank you for your reviews, and I hope this does a little for the people who felt like Claire might not have been as invested in her lover as we all are. And also because I couldn't just leave everyone happy.**

 **"Claire can't stop thinking, and at two in the morning, it's not just a problem for her."**

 _ **I Go Walking In My Sleep**_

* * *

She was quiet as she slipped out of her shared bed in their apartment and padded out into the hall and from there into the kitchen. Her mind was spinning circles, which it had done for the last three weeks, and there was no reason to stay in bed when she couldn't possibly sleep. Putting the kettle on an eye on the stove, Claire slid a stool out at the counter and sat down, putting her head in her hands.

There in the dark with the building sound of water boiling, she broke again. She couldn't stop the tidal wave of emotion that crashed down on her, familiar dark waters claiming her. Anxiety had plagued her leading up to the meeting of her teenage twins, but the confusing feelings after were what had her crying in the kitchen at two in the morning.

She must have let the kettle whistle for too far long, because suddenly she wasn't alone. The screeching kettle was on another eye, she had arms wrapped around her, and her face pressed against a chest, sobbing against it bitterly. He rubbed one of her shoulders until she slowly calmed down. Finally, she pulled away, and looked up at the face in the shadows.

"I'm…" she was going to say sorry, but he stopped her with a kiss that told her not to be. It started the tears back up, not as bitter as before but still enough that she leaned against his chest and let him rub her back while they took over.

"You could have woken me up," he said, his voice more of a deep rumble in his chest with her ear so close. Claire lingered only a minute more against him before turning back to the counter and wiping at her face with the bottom of her shirt. "The crying was a surprise," she told him. Her control on her grief was generally better, and if she cried like she just had, it was usually when she was alone.

A light flicked on, blinding her, but not stopping her lover from moving to make tea with the water in the kettle. He brought her a mug once it was done and she blew the steam from it a few times before either of them spoke again.

"I couldn't sleep. I just kept thinking, so I came out here hoping…I don't know."

"Is it the kids?" he asked, too perceptive. Her expression must have said as much, because he looked away like he knew what she was thinking. He stood on the other side of the kitchen island, arms braced against the surface, "Do you want to talk about it?"

They looked at each other for a long minute while she thought, before she shook her head and looked down at the tea.

She didn't want to talk about it…but she needed to.

"I just…I think I expected it to be easier. That it wouldn't matter that I had missed most of their lives. That I would be here and that would be enough to reset the clock. Do you know what I mean?"

He was making a face across the counter, and she plowed on, "I thought it would feel like they were my kids…instead, they're like…they could be my siblings. They could be the neighbor's kids. I never kissed their 'boo-boos' or tucked them in at night or held them when they were babies. I never had to yell at them for lying or ground them or get them out of whatever shit-storm they got themselves into. I'm not their mom. I'm an idea." There was a lump in her throat and she was blinking back tears. It was going to be an ugly cry if she started back up again, the injustice of her situation making her bitterly angry.

"I didn't even get to name them," she said, grinding her teeth, trying to get through it, "I wouldn't have called him 'Nathan.' If I was going to name him after my dad, it would have been 'Noah.' And my grandma on my dad's side was great, but…I just…I wish…" Dropping back into the dark waters of her emotions, Claire cried maybe an hour this time, finding other things she had missed and wished she could have done to cry about.

When he carried her back to their bedroom and laid her back down, she didn't let go of his neck. A wild thought had run through her mind, almost gone before she chased it down and put it into action.

They couldn't go back to change the past. She only had the future.

He kissed her back when she crushed her mouth to his, and if he could tell that she was a bit desperate, he didn't let it show. They undressed with deft hands and tangled themselves together until the friction drew muted, breathy versions of each other's names from their lips. It hit her about the time that the stars behind her eyes dissipated that fixing herself might not be as easy as having another baby, and that it might be the exact opposite of what would fix her.

In the dark, with his arms wrapped around her, Claire hung on the edge between hoping for two outcomes.

* * *

 **A/N: I have more planned for this story, but I'm a slow writer. Hope you all enjoyed!**


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